‘Bakit Kulang Pa Rin?’

In JamesPangks’ story, there is a cruelty in almost making it. But perhaps even crueler is spending three seasons not even getting close enough to almost.

It’s in the slow, familiar ache of falling short again after already giving your whole body to the climb. After three seasons of losses, it follows you home, and meets you in the bathroom when everyone else is asleep.

“Sa banyo, o bago matulog. Umiiyak ako,” James Mendoza, aka JamesPangks, tells ALL-STAR. 

He was the MPL’s most promising rookie in Season 15, ascending to the league after sweeping the MDL Season 5 and earning the nickname “Man With A Million Moves.”

‘Bumalik lang din sa akin yung mga season na nalaglag ako.’

Expectation was heavy, but the fall is heavier when you hit the bottom finish after three consecutive seasons.  

It has become a feeling he knows too well.

“Nalulungkot lang ako kasi parang bumalik lang din sa akin yung mga season na nalaglag ako,” he said softly. “Same feeling na naman.”

The words do not sound dramatic when he says them. That is perhaps what makes them heavier. Some players rage against defeat. Others hide behind statistics, drafts, or excuses. 

Pangks carries his losses differently, like someone trying to understand why effort sometimes refuses to become reward.

This was supposed to be the season that ended the cycle. He promised himself that last season’s elimination would be the last one. Instead, the wound reopened in almost the exact same shape.

And so the questions began to return.

“Binibigay ko naman yung best ko kada laban, naaayos ko ang mga mali ko, pero bakit kulang pa rin?”

‘Ako ba ang problema o may curse ba sa akin?’

In Philippine esports, we often celebrate players only when the cameras finally recognize them. 

Championships become proof of worth. 

Playoff appearances become validation. But another story that exists underneath the confetti: the players who keep showing up despite disappointment beginning to harden around them.

But talent can become its own burden when results refuse to follow.

“Hindi ko alam kung ako ba ang problema o may curse ba sa akin,” he admitted.

It’s devastating to hear a young man slowly negotiate with his own self-worth in real time. 

Every athlete eventually reaches that private room where confidence and doubt begin speaking over each other. 

And when losses repeat themselves long enough, even gifted people start searching for supernatural explanations:

Curse. Timing. Destiny.

Anything to explain the distance between sacrifice and arrival.

When I asked him the last time he cried, he answered without hesitation.

“Noong nalaglag kami.”

Then he described where.

“Sa banyo, o bago matulog.”

There is dignity in the way some people hide their pain. 

Pangks told me he does not like showing people he is weak. He wants to remain an example for his teammates, someone who still chooses positivity no matter what happens.

What makes JamesPangks’ story linger is that hardship is not new to him. Long before the MPL stage, there was already another version of him drifting through life without direction. He once told me about going to church and suddenly remembering his mother’s words: no matter what happens, just live your life.

Some people survive because ambition carries them. Others survive because faith does.

“Pinatibay ko kasi ang faith ko kay Lord,” he said. “Mindset ko, after ng lahat ito, may magandang mangyayari.”

You hear that sentence often in the Philippines, sometimes so often that people forget how difficult it actually is to practice. 

Faith sounds beautiful when life is working. But faith after repeated disappointment is something else entirely. It asks you to continue walking without evidence.

And JamesPangks still walks.

Even now, after another failed season, he speaks with patience. He talks about God’s timing the way farmers talk about rain, trusting that something invisible is already moving beneath the soil even if the field still looks empty.

“Maaring hindi ko pa naiintindihan ngayon pero pagdating ng araw, ibibigay niya rin ang gusto ko.”

Maybe that is the hardest thing about dreams. Sometimes they do not break immediately. Sometimes they stay alive long enough to hurt you repeatedly before finally becoming real.

But somewhere inside Pangks, hope remains strangely intact.

Because he still believes the story is not over.

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